Bruce Willis — the top 10 movie quotes

Bruce Willis in Die Hard 1988 directed by John McTiernan 20th Century Fox
(Image credit: ScreenProd / Alamy)

We asked you to tell us your favorite Bruce Willis movie quotes... and you came up with so many pithy quips, zippy comebacks and scintillating one-liners that we just had to compile the best ones. 

So here are Bruce Willis' top 10 wisecracks of wisdom with asterisks appropriately applied.

1. "Yippie-Kai-Yay, Motherf*****r!"

Die Hard - Bruce Willis Hanging Tough

First coined in Die Hard, this is dirty vest-clad cop John McClane's catchphrase and hit the top spot by a considerable margin. We're not actually sure what it means, but it has a nice ring to it when shouted at top volume while using heavy artillery!

2. "Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister."

BRUCE WILLIS DIE HARD 1988

(Image credit: AA Film Archive / Alamy)

Another pearl from the original Die Hard and proof positive that Bruce's John McClane has big feet (or his sister has very small ones!). It's not like we didn't already know that considering how many times he puts his foot in his mouth.

3. "I don't f****ing believe this. Another basement. Another elevator. How can the same s**t happen to the same guy twice?"

John McClane again, this time in Die Hard 2, at the moment when he finally twigged he was appearing in a sequel... Wonder if he was still asking himself that question by Die Hard 4.0?

4. "Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead."

A moment of profundity in a sea of profanity, the first of only three non-Die Hard quotes comes in at number four. This time it's Bruce's character, Butch Coolidge, in Quentin Tarantino's ultimate cult quote-a-thon, Pulp Fiction. Remind us, though, who the heck was Zed?

5. Matt Farrell: "You just killed a helicopter with a car?" John McClane: "I was out of bullets."

(Image credit: Frank Masi)

Insouciance becomes McClane in this exchange with Justin Long's gobsmacked sidekick after a seriously insane stunt in Die Hard 4.0 — one of many as it happens.

6. "I ain't gonna kill him, I'm just gonna take a foot off of him. A man can work with one foot."

(Image credit: five)

Brucie's Harry Stamper proves that he's all heart as the blue-collar ballbreaker (and we mean that quite literally) who's gonna save the world from Armageddon.

7. "Hey, well, as far as I'm concerned, progress peaked with frozen pizza."

John McClane in Die Hard 2 gives his thought-provoking take on what Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was really all leading up to. (Fast food with longevity, folks, just in case you were wondering).

8. "Welcome to the party, pal."

John McClane in Die Hard gives Reginald VelJohnson's beat cop the good news that he's just gate-crashed a high-rise shoot-out with Alan Rickman's band of heavily-armed professional terrorists. Ah, good times...

9. "Maybe you need a drink to ease the pain of being wrong."

Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker in STRIKING DISTANCE 1993

(Image credit: Allstar / Alamy)

Although the 1993 film Striking Distance itself isn't the most memorable, as always Willis' manages to invest his hard-boiled disgraced ex-cop (sensing a theme here?) Det. Tom Hardy with enough humor and personality to (just about) save the movie. Here it's partner Det. Jo Christian (Sarah Jessica Parker) facing the Willis quip. She's got a few one-liners of her own though.

10. "Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for conversation, but maybe you could just shut up for a moment."

Bruce's Korben Dallas shows  Milla Jovovich's Supreme Being his sensitive side in The Fifth Element... A fitting final line to round up our Top Ten.

So there you have it...  Who knew Brucie Boy was such a font of memorable one-liners!